How would you generate enough large PRs to count as "spam"? You could add gibberish or delete random lines of code but it was obviously not plausible looking.

Obviously they could have. Obviously it's much easier now.

You can cut down a tree regardless if you use a knife or a chainsaw.

You can get to work each day regardless if you walk or drive.

this article is about the flood of junior developers who are producing enormous prs they’ve never seen full of untrustworthy code that a human hasn’t evaluated

arguing that it’s possible to make them by hand isn’t just missing the point; it’s missing the entire discussion